


Things Past

by dotfic



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-10-22
Updated: 2007-10-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 16:25:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,416
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/321812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dotfic/pseuds/dotfic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The boys go poking around into the past, and Sam dares to hope. (Coda for 3x03)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Past

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  Here you go, the fic about the you-know-where. The fic that started working itself out in my head before the episode was even over. [](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/profile)[**pheebs1**](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/) is hosting a [Black Rock Fic Challenge](http://pheebs1.livejournal.com/121749.html), and I made a picspam of the you-know-where [here](http://dotfic.livejournal.com/103139.html).
> 
> a/n: Picks up where 3x03 left off. Thank you so much to [](http://marinarusalka.livejournal.com/profile)[**marinarusalka**](http://marinarusalka.livejournal.com/) for the beta and tweaking.

  
When they got back to the car, Dean immediately opened the back door, rummaged around, and pulled out the first aid kit. He pointed emphatically at the back seat bench.

Sam sat.

"Shirt and jacket," Dean ordered, opening the kit on the roof of the car. The night was sliding towards daybreak, and the air bit against Sam's skin after he gingerly tugged off one jacket sleeve and unbuttoned his shirt, pulling it down off his shoulder enough to allow Dean access to the wound. This was a familiar routine, with either one of them at the receiving end. Usually it was Dean, although in the last few years, Sam had started to edge up on his record for injuries.

"Ow!" Sam yelped a few minutes later.

"Don't be such a baby," Dean grumbled, and tossed aside a blood-soaked wad of cotton.

He returned to his work and Sam bit his lip. The pain wasn't that bad, and he still felt oddly like giggling. It was the relief of getting rid of that stupid rabbit's foot, the lightness of no longer having to worry that he would die because he'd tripped over a banana peel or something equally idiotic. The sheer weirdness of the job had been almost a relief, something to keep his mind on other than the constant, unsettling hum of research and worry and watching clocks.

A hiss of pain escaped him but Dean didn't remark on it; and Sam suddenly felt less like laughing.

All his research to save Dean, and tonight it was Dean's negotiation skills that gave Sam back his life. Just as Dean had given him his life back in Cold Oak. Of course, they wouldn't talk about that. They'd talk about other things, argue about whether they should let a demon help them, or discuss where they should grab dinner. But the inevitable march of days, this thing Dean had done for him, no, that was forbidden territory. So was the research he'd been keeping from Dean; and Sam wondered how exactly to ask for where he needed to go next.

As Dean worked with an efficiency as good as any ER nurse, Sam told himself there were no guarantees. The answer might not be there; and if it wasn't, he'd keep right on looking elsewhere.

Dean taped bandages in place over Sam's shoulder. "Okay?" He tapped his fingers gently against the bandage, and Sam nodded. "Maybe you can stay out of trouble now," Dean added.

"Wasn't my fault, Dean, it was that con artist, and the rabbit's..."

"Yeah, I know. Just...try not to get shot again anytime soon, okay?" Dean busied himself putting away the bloodied gauze, the scissors and peroxide and surgical tape.

Sam tugged his shirt and jacket back on and stood up. "Dean?"

"Yeah?" Dean opened the driver's side door, eyes on the steering wheel. Blood stained his fingers; Dean wiped them on his jeans without looking, then slid inside.

"You give any thought to going back to the storage locker?" Sam tried to keep his voice casual as he got into the car on his side and shut the door. The interior of the Impala seemed warm after the cemetery air, enclosed and safe.

Still not looking at him, Dean adjusted the mirror and put the key in the ignition. "What for, Sam? We already took the weapons we wanted to keep."

The car rolled slowly over gravel, then picked up speed as the wheels found concrete. "Because there's other stuff in there. Who knows what Dad left behind?" Sam's knee jiggled up and down; he put his palm against his jeans, stopping it, and tried to keep the jitter of hope in his mind from getting too insistent.

But he did hope. Someplace in that dusty mess of strange objects and old files, Dad might have written something down, or found something, that held the key Sam needed. When they'd gone to the locker the first time, they'd been in too much of a hurry going after the missing box for Sam to get a chance to look deeper. But now he felt the pull of the place, almost a physical need.

"Some things are better left as they are," Dean said, voice soft and without a hint of the brittleness Sam might have once expected to hear.

He wasn't sure how far he could push Dean on this. "Aren't you curious?"

The headlights cut into the darkness ahead, the dashboard glowing. The sky started to lighten in the east. Dean hadn't made a move for the radio, and the peace seemed right.

Dean rubbed his knuckles across his chin, driving one-handed, eyes fixed on the road, then replaced his other hand on the wheel. "A little."

"Well...?" Sam bit his tongue to keep from saying more. In the end, it would have to seem like Dean's idea.

After a long pause, Dean finally nodded. "Okay." He took the turn that would bring them back to Buffalo.

* * *

Place smelled a bit like Dad -- not like Dad himself, really, but things that reminded Sam of him. Old wood and herbs, dust and metal and oil. He ran his fingers over the rough wood of the coffin -- there was a story there Dad had never told. Dad had told them many stories and kept even more to himself.

When Dean shot him a warning look, Sam shrugged. "What? Dean, I'm not stupid. I wasn't going to open it."

Except he had thought of doing that, if the files didn't have what he needed. He wouldn't do it, probably. Maybe. Dean had made a deal with a demon. Sam was seriously thinking about working with one. What was opening an old coffin to that?

They stared down at it, at the tattered red and blue flag draped across.

"What do you think's in there?" Dean said.

Sam cracked a grin. "Vampire?"

"Shaddap." Dean aimed his flashlight towards the back, catching the gleam of dusty chrome on the motorcycle. "Dude. Now, I did want to get a closer look at that. Sweet ride. Wonder what it's doing here?"

"Maybe Dad had a wild youth?" Sam wandered towards the filing cabinets while Dean ran his finger along the seat of the motorcycle, leaving a darker, clean trail across the leather.

"And maybe it's a cursed motorcycle; whoever rides it, I dunno, can't stop or something like that."

Sam glanced over at Dean and saw that he'd gone to the piano, face pretty much a blank. He wanted to ask if Dean recognized the instrument. To the best of his knowledge, no one in the family knew how to play; but maybe it was Mom's and Dad and Dean never mentioned it. Or maybe it was some kind of family heirloom. But Dean's glance slid over it and went to the freaky mask hanging on the shelves next to it -- Dean made a face at it, stuck out his tongue and Sam stifled the urge to laugh.

He began to poke around on the desk by the filing cabinets, turning over the pages of the old books, while Dean wandered to another set of metal shelves and tugged out a small cardboard box. Sitting in the creaky desk chair, Sam glanced up and saw his brother go still.

That stillness could mean a lot of things. It could mean there was a disembodied hand in the box, or really good old whiskey, or a portal to a hell dimension; sometimes it was difficult to tell with Dean. But Dean held the box a few more heartbeats before tucking the flaps closed with unusual speed. He shoved it back on the shelf and walked away towards the room with the weapons.

When Dean seemed safely occupied elsewhere, Sam got up and walked over to pull the box of the shelf. He felt like he was doing something sneaky. The box was unmarked, and fairly light, maybe ten pounds. Something solid slid around when he moved it. Checking again to make sure Dean wasn't looking, Sam knelt on the filthy floor with the box before his bent knees. He aimed his flashlight down and opened the flaps, preparing himself for the fact that it wouldn't be this easy, that this box wouldn't be the one he needed.

The possibility kept tugging at him, though, until he saw what was inside, and realized he'd found something of a different kind of importance. Another box, one of those acid-free archive boxes, nestled inside the larger one. Across the faded ivory-colored lid, his mother's initials curled across, the gilt glinting dully in the flashlight beam.

She was his mother too but as he undid the ribbon and opened the lid, he felt like an intruder. Dean hadn't even looked inside; and Sam remembered his brother's quiet refusal to visit their mother's headstone last year. He glanced over to check on Dean again, and saw him happily poking around into boxes and shelves, like a kid looking for treasure.

Dust tickled his nose and made him sneeze. Sam turned his attention back to the archive box. As he lifted the lid, the hint of a scent drifted up to him, elusive and gone so quickly he might have imagined it. The hairs on the back of his neck prickled; the moment too much resembled a common trait of hauntings. But this was no haunting, this was natural, his mother's scent sealed in with her things, the box unopened for so long that the scent still lingered.

Inside there were photographs, some copies of familiar ones Sam had seen before: Mom and Dad while they were dating; a picture of Dad in a t-shirt looking young and eerily like Dean; a picture of Dean sitting in a chair holding a blanket-wrapped baby. Some he hadn't seen, like the one of his mother sitting outside on a lawn chair, smiling broadly as she held a baby up for the camera to see. The baby's face was scrunched and it looked very cross. Sam flipped the picture over and saw unfamiliar handwriting that had to be Mom's, "Mary, Sammy, August 1983." Just a few months before her death.

He thought of keeping the picture, tucking it away safe into his jacket pocket, but that seemed wrong. It belonged here with the other things. As Sam poked around at the items, he realized these weren't what his father had chosen to keep, these were the things his mother kept. After he'd lost her, Dad had held on to what was precious to her, but put it away where it couldn't hurt him.

Another picture, taken indoors in what was probably the living room in Lawrence, showed Mom holding a sleeping infant. Sam didn't have to turn the picture over to know it was Dean.

He put the pictures aside and touched the sharpness of a pinecone. That was another story he'd probably never hear, why a pinecone meant so much to her. Beneath the pinecone lay two candles, half burned down and while he couldn't say for sure, this time Sam thought he knew their meaning and why they were there.

Jess had done that once, taken the candles home with her from the restaurant during a memorable date, about six weeks after they'd met. For a second Sam smelled the after-scent of blown-out candles and remembered the heat of Jess' mouth against his, how soft her hair was under his fingers, the curve of her against him.

Odd how it didn't hurt this time; there was only the faintest trace of ache to the memory, and he smiled thinking of her.

He found two movie-ticket stubs, print faded but still legible, for _Star Wars_ , and a pair of knitted multi-colored baby booties that could have been his or Dean's. Beneath the booties was a flat ceramic piece, a lumpy, rough circle with a clear green glaze and a small hand-print impression in the middle. Beneath it big, sloppy block letters proudly proclaimed that this belonged to DEAN AGE 4.

The ceramic was cool against his palm. Sam covered the small handprint with his own hand.

The realization hit him fresh all over again, sharp and overwhelming: Dean was going to die.

And for a moment, the thought pulled all the air out of the room. Forcing himself to take deep breaths that felt ineffectual, Sam put the ceramic away, closed the archive box, put it back in the cardboard box, and closed the flaps. With great care, he got to his feet and put the box back on its place on the shelf.

No. _No._ Dean wasn't going to die, leaving Sam with nothing but a storage locker, a box of memorabilia, a '67 Chevy filled with AC/DC cassettes, rock salt, and guns. Sam was going to figure this out. The answers were out there waiting for him, teasing him just out of reach. He only had to figure out where to look.

Sam went to the filing cabinets, where the shadows of the flashlight made the stuffed birds seem like they might flutter their wings and attack at any moment -- why Dad had those was just another mystery among many others and right then he hardly cared. He tugged at a drawer.

Locked, natch.

What he really wanted to do was find a crowbar and force the thing open, but Dean might notice and get suspicious about Sam's urgency, about what he was looking for. Instead Sam put the flashlight on top of the cabinet, then made himself settle for patience and care, using the lock-pick Dean had taught him to always carry. He got the drawer open, pulled out a stack of files, and sat down at the desk.

He heard a step behind him. "Hey, Sammy. What're you doing?"

"Uh...just looking through Dad's old papers."

"You hungry? This place smells funky, I'm going out to get pizza. Want anything special on it?"

"Green peppers," Sam said, turning to look at Dean, who made a disgusted face, then left.

Sam hoped Dean would get back quickly; the quiet of the place should have been welcoming but instead it felt tomb-like, cold and lonely, as he paged through the first folder.

If Dad had saved Dean before, maybe he could do it again.

 _Please, Dad. Please._

He propped the flashlight on a stack of books. Sam continued to read, finally letting the hope loose to flow through him along with his heartbeats.

  
~end  



End file.
